Darcy’s Legacy Tortoise (Darcy and Elizabeth Forever: Pride and Prejudice Variations)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

THE SNUB

Darcy

Obligations have a way of finding me, especially when Caroline Bingley is involved.

She summoned me for a conference on what she called ‘the Charles situation.’ I arrived at half past one at Hurst House, where Louisa was torturing the pianoforte with a barely tolerable Mozart, and Mr. Hurst already snoring beneath his newspaper.

“Miss Audley has forty thousand pounds,” Caroline said, threading her needle without looking up.

“Her father’s Surrey estate is three hundred acres, and she is connected to the Pembrokes through her mother.

She plays, she sings, and she speaks Italian.

She is, in short, precisely what Charles needs. ”

I knew the Pembrokes, of course—her mother was likely one of the late Earl’s daughters—but a grand pedigree could not manufacture a compatibility of temper. “Has Charles been consulted on what he needs?”

“Oh, Darcy, you know Charles; he has been impossible.” She squinted at her embroidery, but it had not advanced a single stitch.

“He haunts his club, drinks too much sherry, and moped through the whole of Christmas. Why, last week he told Louisa he was considering returning to Hertfordshire for the shooting, which we both know has nothing to do with pheasants.”

“Indeed.” Bingley’s inconstancy never failed to astonish, though by now it ought to be routine. We had all agreed London would cure him—parties, society, the promise of the Season—yet here he was, still pining.

“Still.” Caroline’s mouth thinned. “He mentioned that Bennet girl again at breakfast yesterday. Something about the color of her ribbons at the Netherfield ball. This is unlike him, Darcy. Miss Audley is fashionable, her face is perfect, and those eyes of hers are bluer than anything Miss Jane Bennet can concoct.”

“Miss Bennet’s ribbons were pale-blue,” I noted, for accuracy’s sake, although I had no opinion about blue eyes, in contrast to another pair of fine eyes I refused to think about. They were brown.

Louisa’s fingers stumbled over the keys, and both sisters stared as if I’d announced a fondness for bonnets. Even Hurst twitched beneath his newspaper.

“One notices these things,” I said to the fire.

“You? Darcy? I hadn’t thought you appreciated feminine accouterments.

” Caroline’s eyes narrowed, precisely because I had never noted her garish fashions and overwhelming ostrich feathers.

She then turned to Louisa to bolster her position.

“You see our difficulty. Charles is five-and-twenty and behaving like a schoolboy pining for a girl in a village where the principal entertainment was a quarterly assembly and the nearest thing to fashion was Mrs. Long’s turban.

Miss Audley would cure him of this nonsense inside a fortnight. ”

“If he is willing to be cured.” I could not help but let the dry remark slip.

“He will be.” Miss Bingley trod over my thoughts. “I have arranged for him to attend the Meynell musicale. Miss Audley will be performing, looking extremely well, and Charles will do what he always does when confronted with a pretty woman of good connection: he will forget what came before.”

I considered this. She was not wrong. Bingley’s affections had always been easily engaged and, I had thought, easily redirected.

It was partly why I had felt justified in separating him from Miss Bennet in the first place.

A man whose heart turns so readily cannot have been deeply attached.

This had seemed sound reasoning in November.

It seemed rather less so in March, with Bingley still talking about pale-blue ribbons.

“I have accepted on his behalf,” Caroline added. “He need only appear and be agreeable, which, whatever his other failings, Charles can generally manage.”

“And if he is not agreeable?”

“Then I shall manage for him.” She smiled, considering the matter settled. “Louisa, do play something less funereal. Mr. Hurst is already asleep; I do not wish to bury him entirely.”

Mr. Hurst’s butler, Phelps, entered with a silver salver. Since Hurst had not roused, he approached Caroline with what I felt was undue caution.

“Miss Bingley, ma’am. There is a Miss Bennet at the door. She has called to ask if you and Mrs. Hurst are at home.”

My spine snapped straight. Elizabeth Bennet, of all people, would never call on Miss Bingley and Mrs. Hurst. The dislike was mutual, sharpened by the Bingley sisters’ slights and parried with Elizabeth’s wicked wit.

Curiosity pricked at me, but a gentleman does not peer out windows. I stood still and let the drama unfold.

Caroline sucked in a breath—never her most attractive habit. Even Hurst’s snoring paused with a snort, though whether from awareness or indigestion was anyone’s guess.

“Miss Bennet,” Caroline repeated.

“Miss Jane Bennet, ma’am. Her carriage is waiting.”

“Her carriage.” Caroline let the word settle, gently, the way one sets down a questionable object before deciding whether to keep it or discard it. “How unfortunate. We are not at home this afternoon, Phelps.”

“Very good, ma’am.”

I was aghast at the snub, but perhaps it could not be helped.

Even more disturbing was the image of Jane Bennet calling in person without invitation.

What could be going on? The Jane Bennet I knew was too properly bred to call on a gentleman’s sisters, especially since no friendship could be presumed.

The butler withdrew, and Caroline took up her needle again, although she pointed it to the ceiling.

“Poor creature. One cannot fault her, I suppose. She is in London, staying with that uncle of hers in Cheapside, and I imagine she hoped we might resume our friendship. But these things run their natural course, and the kindest thing, truly, is to let them.”

“You knew she was in London.”

“She wrote to me in December.”

“And you did not call on her.”

“I saw no advantage in encouraging an attachment that leads nowhere. Charles is not going to marry Miss Bennet. You said so yourself, Mr. Darcy. Her feelings were not engaged, her family is quite impossible, and a continued acquaintance would only prolong the girl’s confusion.

” She looked up. “It is a mercy. She will see it in time.”

A mercy. I turned the word over and went to the window, making sure the thick curtains obscured me.

The street below was grey, the pavement damp from an earlier rain, the light thin and grudging as March always was in London. Directly below the house, a hired carriage stood at the curb, its horse shifting as if it too wished to be elsewhere.

Miss Bennet appeared, her blue pelisse—the same shade as at Netherfield—now hanging on her as if winter had stolen something more than appetite.

The driver descended to open the door, and she paused with her hand on the frame. And then, she looked up.

I drew back so sharply that the curtain moved.

And I could not erase the image of her face tilted upward.

She was thinner than I remembered. Her features, which had been so serene at Netherfield that I had taken their composure for the whole of her feeling, were not serene now.

There was a quiet devastation that tore at my heart, as if she had hoped against her better judgment and been proven right to doubt.

She was not indifferent, and I had been utterly wrong.

A woman who does not care does not cross London to call on someone who will not see her.

I had told Bingley that Miss Bennet’s composure bespoke an untouched heart, that her smiles were habitual, her sweetness general.

I had been certain, and I had been wrong, and the evidence of my error was climbing into a hired carriage with all the dignity of a woman who has been cut and will not permit herself to show it.

I watched the carriage pull away.

“Mr. Darcy?” Caroline’s voice, bright and perfectly composed, came from behind me. “Has something caught your eye?”

“I have an engagement I had forgotten.”

“On a Tuesday?”

“Why, yes. I do believe our interview about Charles has concluded. Good afternoon, Miss Bingley. Mrs. Hurst.”

I was in the hallway before Caroline could reply, in my greatcoat before the footman had found his wits, and in my carriage with an address on my tongue before I’d decided what sense, if any, I was making.

“Cheapside,” I told the coachman. “A textile warehouse, Gardiner.”

I had known the name since Netherfield. When a man considers whether his closest friend should attach himself to a particular family, he takes notice of the relations, and the uncle in Cheapside had figured prominently in my reasons for advising Bingley to withdraw.

I had pictured a cramped shop on a dirty lane, a man in shirtsleeves with the manner of his counting-house.

What I found was a well-kept building on a respectable corner, with clean signage and a clerk who showed me to Mr. Gardiner’s office within minutes.

The office was warm, orderly, and furnished with good taste. Mr. Gardiner rose when I entered. He was perhaps in his late thirties, tall, well-tailored, with kind brown eyes and the easy bearing of someone who had nothing to prove.

“Mr. Darcy,” he said after the clerk introduced me. “This is unexpected. Please, sit down.”

“I must beg your pardon for calling without notice. I need a supplier for fine merino. Pemberley has standing contracts, but I am told your firm handles superior Continental weaves.”

“We do. Saxony principally this season; the quality is remarkable.” He settled into his chair with a naturalness that made my own stiffness feel faintly absurd. “Tighter weave, better for a Derbyshire winter. Tell me the weight you need, and I will pull samples.”